Ethics
Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:50:36 -0700
> If you can't think of at least fifty other ways in which you
> could hurt people for your own gain, you're just not thinking
> hard enough.
A fair criticism, perhaps, but I still think the naive arguments
against egoism aren't thinking hard enough or long-term enough
in many cases: most of the arguments just blindly assume that
if one commits a crime and is not caught, then there are no
negative consequences to that act. That's just not true. There
are consequences to living your life with a set of principles,
and consequences to violating those principles, and not just to
one's self-esteem or confidence in those principles, but in the
real world.
Theft, for example, _always_ has the long-term consequence of
allocating the resources of society inefficiently in the long
run, which eventually impacts my potential for wealth. Even if
I silently embezzled a few dollars from some billion-dollar
corporation who never notices, that's a few dollars that they
did not use their proven acumen to invest; perhaps a small
project that didn't get funded that may have created a small
product that I might have used to gain more wealth than the
dollars I stole.
Any physical act of force is the same: even if I am never
punished for the act, I have prevented someone from using the
full potential of their will to do things that may benefit me
in the long run. Every human being is a potential trader, and
_any_ act I do to any human being affects their potential for
future trade with me, so I have still never found any example
of a crime without consequences. The arguments so far shown
against egoism simply assume the existence of such a crime
without proof.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>